Chapter 29

Dani called on a Tuesday afternoon, voice tight in a way Ivy hadn't heard from her since before any of this started.

"I need to ask you something," Dani said, "and I need you to actually answer me this time instead of giving me the vague version."

Ivy shifted Rowan onto her hip, heart already sinking. "Okay."

"A reporter came by my work today. Asking questions about you. About some kind of 'incident' out near where you moved. Animal attacks, unexplained hospital transfers, a security firm buying up land permits under three different shell names." Dani's voice dropped lower. "Ivy, she had photos. Blurry ones, night-vision, something big in the trees near a stone wall. She asked if I knew anything about the Voss family. I said no. I don't know if she believed me."

Ivy's stomach dropped straight through the floor.

"Did she leave a card? A name?"

"Sarah Chen. Independent journalist, apparently working on something bigger than one weird sighting. She said she's been pulling records for almost a year." A pause. "Ivy, what is going on out there? For real, this time. I've let it go for a year because you're happy and the baby's beautiful and I didn't want to push. I can't let it go anymore if strangers are showing up at my job asking questions I can't answer."

Ivy looked down at Rowan, who was chewing contentedly on a wooden block, oblivious to the fact that his entire world might be about to change shape again.

"Come out here," Ivy said finally. "This weekend. I'll tell you everything. In person, not over the phone."

"Everything?"

"Everything," Ivy said. "It's time."

Kade's face went carefully blank when she told him that evening, the particular stillness she'd learned meant he was working hard to keep a bigger reaction contained.

"A journalist," he said. "Pulling records for a year."

"Since before the hearing. Before the challenge fight, even." Ivy paced the length of the nursery while Rowan slept, unable to sit still with this news sitting heavy in her chest. "Kade, if she's had a year, she doesn't just have blurry photos and hospital transfers anymore. She has patterns. Land purchases. Whatever else that adds up to, if you look at it long enough."

"The land purchases are Damon's doing, or they were." Kade rubbed both hands over his face, tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. "Shell companies buying territory adjacent to ours, meant to secure a buffer zone before Thorne's people were fully recognized. I approved it. I didn't think about how it would look from the outside, filed under three different names, right around the same time this town started noticing strange things happening at night."

"So it's not just the wolves anymore. It's money too. A paper trail a good reporter could follow straight to our front door."

"Yes."

Ivy stopped pacing. "What happens if she publishes something? Really publishes it, not just a blog post nobody reads?"

Kade was quiet for a long moment, and that silence told her more than any answer would have.

"There are protocols," he said finally. "Old ones, older than pack law even, meant for exactly this kind of exposure risk. They're not gentle, Ivy. Historically, they involve making sure whoever's gotten too close simply can't publish what they've found."

Ivy's blood went cold. "You mean hurting her."

"I mean it's been done that way before, by packs less careful than I'd want to be." He met her eyes, steady, and something in his face told her he'd already decided something before she'd even finished asking. "I won't do that. Not to a journalist doing her job, and not to your best friend's coworker who probably just thinks she's chasing an interesting story about strange animal sightings. But I need you to understand what we're up against if the old ways aren't the way I choose. We don't exactly have a modern playbook for this."

"Then we write one," Ivy said. "Together. Starting with telling Dani the truth this weekend, because if we can trust one human enough to bring her fully into this, maybe we can figure out how to handle a journalist without becoming exactly the kind of monster this world's afraid we already are."

Kade studied her for a long moment, something like relief and fear both moving behind his amber eyes at once.

"Where do we even start," he said, "with something like this?"

"We start," Ivy said, "the same way we started everything else. By actually talking to each other before it becomes a crisis instead of after."